Includes bibliographical references and indexes

"Introduction --- PART I. Clinical latrogenesis -- 1. The Epidemics of Modern Medicine -- Doctors' Effectiveness - an Illusion -- Useless Medical Treatment -- Doctor-Inflicted Injuries -- Defenseless Patients --- PART II. Social latrogenesis -- 2. The Medicalization of Life -- Political Transmission of Iatrogemc Disease -- Social latrogenesis -- Medical Monopoly -- Value-Free Cure? -- The Medicalization of the Budget -- The Pharmaceutical Invasion -- Diagnostic Imperialism -- Preventive Stigma -- Terminal Ceremonies -- Black Magic -- Patient Majorities -- PART III. Cultural latrogenesis -- Introduction -- 3. The Killing of Pain -- 4. The Invention and Elimination of Disease -- 5. Death Against Death -- Death as Commodity -- The Devotional Dance of the Dead -- The Danse Macabre -- Bourgeois Death -- Clinical Death -- Trade Union Claims to a Natural Death -- Death Under Intensive Care -- PART IV. The Politics of Health -- 6. Specific Counterproductivity -- 7. Political Countermeasures -- Consumer Protection for Addicts -- Equal Access to Torts -- Public Controls over the Professional Mafia -- The Scientific Organization-of Life -- Engineering for a Plastic Womb -- 8. The Recovery of Health -- Industrialized Nemesis -- From Inherited Myth to Respectful Procedure -- The Right to Health -- Health as a Virtue

"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health. The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Iatrogenesis, the name for this new epidemic, comes from iatros, the Greek word for physician, and genesis, meaning origin. Discussion of the disease of medical progress has moved up on the agendas of medical conferences, researchers concentrate on the sick-making powers of diagnosis and therapy, and reports on paradoxical damage caused by cures for sickness take up increasing space in medical dope-sheets [...] The public has been alerted to the perplexity and uncertainty of the best among its hygienic caretakers [...] This book argues that panic is out of place. Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal."-- from Introduction

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